Luís M. A. Bettencourt

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816 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Luís M. A. Bettencourt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas · 362 | Luis Bettencourt on the Universal Properties of Self-Organizing Cities · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

So that's another aspect of a good complex system is that it has –

you know, a somewhat different dynamic at different scales, but it still hangs together in terms of being a whole system, but has sometimes, you know, costs and benefits that play out differently at different scales is what keeps it dynamic.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

And I think it's amazing, and it gives you so much intellectual opportunity when you think this way.

Because we've been conditioned to think that socialism or capitalism, Western democracy versus some East Asian thing, these things are fundamental.

I'm saying at some level that they're not, at least from a point of view.

Cities are more fundamental.

Right.

And that cities exist as you change political system, as you change economic system to some extent, and so on.

Now, there are things that exist in cities that are then unifying if you start thinking this way.

So I think this is a great opportunity, actually.

And it's not by accident that almost all the social sciences started by people looking at cities because they were flabbergasted by it.

all this complexity and trying to make sense of it.

So the beginning, we talked already about Adam Smith and division of labor.

Beginning of sociology is all about this.

How are all these strangers hanging out together?

This must be awful.

Is it awful?

What's happening?

How are people's behaviors changing?

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